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Spent 5 days lost in the Cohutta Wilderness because my map app cached the wrong trail junction
So back in April I planned a 3 night loop through Cohutta Wilderness in north Georgia, right? I had the route mapped out on my phone, downloaded the offline maps, the whole deal. Day 2 I hit this junction near Rough Ridge and my app showed the trail going left, so I went left. Two hours later the trail just vanished into a rhododendron thicket and I'm bushwhacking with a 30 pound pack. Turns out the offline map was cached from an old route that got rerouted after a washout in 2019, and the app never updated the tile. I burned almost 5 hours retracing my steps back to the junction, then another hour just sitting there trying to figure out which way was real. The paper map I almost left at the car had the correct route the entire time. Now I'm stuck on this: do you trust a route once you've verified it on paper, or do you recheck at every junction no matter how sure you are? I lean paper now but I know some people swear the apps are fine if you cache right. What's your call?
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torres.grant12d ago
Man that sounds rough, five days out there with a heavy pack would break me lol. Glad you made it out okay though, that junction stuff is no joke when the trail just disappears on you.
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